With the more complicated “basic” elements of English grammar out of the way, let’s dive into the nitty gritty. Today’s lesson begins a mini series on parts of speech, which will help you continue to refine the way you utilize the grammar rules we’ve covered so far.

Let’s start with some of the first words we learn, nouns.

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.

Heather’s ball rolled down the hill.

Henry went to Rome with his family over the summer.

I burned the brownies.

The stove’s smoking!

In the sentences above, the words in red are all nouns. “Heather” and “Henry” are names. Rome is a place. Brownies, hill, and stove are nouns naming things, and both family and summer refer to concepts or ideas.

There are two different kinds of nouns: common and proper.

Proper nouns are the names of people, places, holidays, months, and days of the week. They talk about something or someone specific, and they should always be capitalized. Common nouns are all nouns that aren’t proper nouns.

Sarah bought a house in Georgia.

Valentines’ Day is on a Saturday this year.

Adam brought postcards back from his trip to Phoenix, Arizona.

In the examples above, the words in red are proper nouns, and the words in blue are common nouns. Sarah and Adam are the names of people. Valentines’ Day is a holiday. Saturday is one of the days of the week. Phoenix is the name of a city, and both Georgia and Arizona are states.

House, year, postcards, and trip are nouns, but they could be talking about any house, year, postcards, or trips. That means they are common nouns and should remain all in lower case unless they're the first word in a sentence.

What about words like he, she, you, and I? Aren’t those nouns?

No. Those words are pronouns, words related to nouns that will be discussed in the next lesson.

That’s this week’s lessons on nouns. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below, and I’ll answer as quickly as possible. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.